Deputy Commerce Minister Sontirat Sontijirawong said that the Business Development Department would this year modernise its work and its role as a regulator so more business can be set up and grow in the country.

Under the plan, the department aims to attract more investors by shortening the period its takes to approve a business via an electronic registration system from about 10 days now to four days. This will result in it taking fewer than 20 days to set up a business instead of the current 21 days, the department said.

“This new procedure should be implemented by May and that should help save time and the cost in doing business in the country,” he said.

Sontirat called for the department to modernise and re-engineer itself to become an e-department for facilitating business registrations.

To promote enterprises to register businesses online and do business transactions online, Sontirat said that the department would encourage more firms to submit their account balances online this year. This measure will save money and time for businesses and the government, he said.

Last year 77 per cent of the firms in Thailand had submitted their account balances online under the e-filing system. This year the department expects the figures to rise to 85 per cent.

To promote business growth, the department will select between 3,000 and 5,000 strong small and medium-sized enterprises to support in a bid to turn them into international traders so that they will create more income for the country. Those SMEs will come mainly from the service sector as |service businesses tend to grow strongly in today’s modern-trading environment.

They include businesses from the healthcare, elderly care and tourism sectors.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/business/EconomyAndTourism/30305214